The Sony Ericsson S700i has finally arrived, sporting an 18-bit TFT screen and a 1.3 MP digital camera. Sindre Lia takes a closer look.
Review summary of the Sony Ericsson S700i:
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 Price: $750.
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Full Sony Ericsson S700i Review:
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Just 6 months shy of Sony Ericsson announcing its new flagship, the S700i finally arrives. Sindre Lia takes a closer look, and finds a handset with potential enough to shoot to the top of our chart.
Exterior
Making an impression already at first glance, the main attraction of the S700i is the large, 2.3" display which covers nearly the entire phone when closed. That it in addition is of the 18-bit TFT variety with a resolution of 240 x 320 pixels means the S700i surpasses all other currently available mobile phones and smartphones as defined by infoSync World at current. Just below this eight wonder of the world we find a large, round five-way navigational pad, flanked by two soft buttons and two additional buttons for navigating back and aborting.
Being a swivel phone, the part of the S700i which contains the screen rotates up to 180 degrees left or right to provide access to the numerical keypad, which incidentally is of comparable size and quality as that of Sony Ericsson's Z600. When opened, the handset measures 108 x 49 x 26 mm, and combined with a considerable 137 g this means the S700i is not only slightly on the heavy side but also somewhat bulky.
The hind side of the S700i harbours its camera lens, concealed behind a protective lid which opens by means of a slider button. In addition, we also find a photo flash here, as well as the handsfree speaker of the phone. An infrared port and a combo button for activating key lock and the photo light are found on the left side of the phone, whilst the right side offers up volume up/down buttons, a picture-taking button and the Memory Stick Duo expansion slot.
Ergonomics
With regard to ergonomics, the Sony Ericsson S700i is just on the verge of being too large for users to comfortably operate it one-handedly. Seeing as how the navigational keys are placed on the part of the phone which contains the screen, there is also a certain amount of height difference between these and the keypad itself. Furthermore, navigating when in closed mode draws attention to the phone being a bit on the thick side.
In addition to the breadth of the handset, the finish of the S700i is somewhat slippery; fortunately, a well-positioned point of gravity ensures that it rests well in ones hand. Of further positive note, both navigational and numerical key emit low noise when used.
Features
Tri-band GSM 900/1800/1900 MHz connectivity coupled with HSCSD and GPRS support is, naturally, in place - however EDGE is notably and somewhat oddly absent. Support for this will however be present in the American edition of the S700i, better known as the Sony Ericsson S710a. As far as PAN connectivity goes, the S700i supports both Infrared and Bluetooth - however yet again, Sony Ericsson has ignored the best interests of consumers by including a Memory Stick Duo expanion slot. Fortunately, 32 MB of internal memory and a bundled 32 MB Memory Stick Duo card mitigates this somewhat.
Features such as an XHTML browser, 40-tone polyphonic ringtones and support for SMS, MMS and J2ME are obviously also in place. There's more, however, as the S700i comes equipped with an integrated FM radio, MP3 player and video player, as well as a bundled handsfree kit which pulls double duty as an antenna for the former mentioned.
A broad feature set aside, however, the main focus of the S700i is its integrated digital camera, which with its 1.3 Megapixel resolution and 8x digital zoom snaps pictures of impressive quality - for being a phone camera, that is. An unedited picture taken with the S700i is available here. The camera can either be used with the screen rotated to a 90 degrees position or when closed, and in the latter mode is actually more reminiscent of a digital camera than a mobile phone. This attention to detail is also carried through to the software aspectsm with the camera application offering a user friendly and digital camera-like user interface. And, in addition to still shots, the camera can also shoot video at QCIF (176 x 144 pixels) resolution.
Performance
This most recent edition of Sony Ericsson's solid mobile phone platform features a slightly improved version of the user friendly and aesthetically pleasing interface found in previous handsets. The large screen and its high resolution also presents an entirely new world view to common tasks such as writing messages or showing pictures, and for instance eliminates scrolling entirely when viewing SMS messages.
Platform-keyboard interaction is a speedy and smooth operation, and it is also possible to listen to the radio or play back MP3 files whilst using other aspects of the phone. On the note of audio, we also found both the bundled handsfree kit and the handsfree speaker to be more than adequate.
Overall voice quality also proved good, and considering the advanced feature set of the phone it would be fair to say that the battery life of the S700i is comparably fully acceptable. Sony Ericsson lists the talk and standby times as 7 hours and 12,5 days respectively, whilst our experiences returned approximately 4 hours of talk time and 6 days of standby time.
Availability
The Sony Ericsson S700i is now available in European markets, and sells in the $750 USD price range.
Price and availability
The Sony Ericsson S700i will start selling for $750 () in November 1999.
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